Fw: Re: Matrushka; Hryvna: more

[David Bergdahl]

Jim MacKillop's comment attached
_________________________________
"Raffiniert ist der Herr Gott, aber Boshaft ist er nicht"
--Albert Einstein


----- Original Message -----
From: "Jim MacKillop" <mackillj at yahoo.com>
To: "David Bergdahl" <einstein at frognet.net>
Sent: Thursday, July 18, 2002 2:55 PM
Subject: Re: Re: Matrushka; Hryvna: more


> David:
>
> The question is asked without sufficient background in
> early European history.  Recent evidence (genome
> studies, etc.) suggests that the Celtic peoples (a
> term of 18th century coinage) have no unified ethnic
> identity, only shared, related languages. Those
> languages are first noted in the east, especially the
> Danube Valley.  It appears that that people we call
> "Celts" most often referred to themsleves with words
> containing the phoneme gal-, thus the Latin Gallia.
> People calling themselves gal- survived in many parts
> of Europe, thus Portugal, as well as the two Galicias.
> I am not sure what the Polish and Spanish examples
> have identical spellings in English, but it's mostly
> likely the influence of medieval Latin.  In Poland,
> which I have twice visited recently, Galicia is
> pronounced ("gal-ITS-ya"), a Latin borrowing.
>
> Best,
>
> Jim MacKillop
> --- David Bergdahl <einstein at frognet.net> wrote:
> > Jim Landau wrote
> >
> > "Which brings up the etymology of "Galicia".  The
> > region in Spain was, I am
> > told, named after the Gauls (the people who lived in
> > Omnis Gallia), which is
> > confusing because the Spanish trace their ancestry
> > to the "Celtiberians",
> > the
> > supposed merger of Celts with the pre-existing
> > (proto-Basque?) Iberians.
> > Also, the region's name seems to be spelled
> > "Galicia" but the local dialect
> > is "Gallego" (with palatalized "ll").
> >
> > Is the Eastern European Galicia also named after the
> > Gauls?  And if so how
> > did they get so far east, past the Goths into Slavic
> > territory?"
> >
> > Your assumption is wrong--the Gauls did not
> > originate in the west and
> > migrate east, but originated in the east.  They
> > first show up north of the
> > alps and then come in contact with the Romans in the
> > Po Valley.  The
> > Germanic and Slavic peoples are later arrivals in
> > northern and southwestern
> > Europe.
> >
> > The Gauls, like the rest of the Celts--and all other
> > Indo-Europeans--originated in the east and spread
> > westwards into Europe;
> > their origin has been contested over the last
> > century but the center of the
> > competing hypotheses seems to be the area north of
> > the Black Sea.  The Celts
> > first invade Italy around 400 BCE and battle the
> > Romans at Clusium in 390
> > BCE, defeating the Roman army on the Allia, advance
> > on Rome, burn it and
> > besiege the Capitol in 387 BCE--this is how they
> > enter history, coming over
> > the alps in N. Italy. (Dates from Gerhard Herm, The
> > Celts [1975]).
> >
> > Jim McKillop (Dictionary of Celtic Mythology [1998])
> > says in part in his
> > entry for Gaul "The culture and the language of the
> > Celts extended across
> > the Alps into Cisalpine Gaul ... what is today
> > northern Italy down to the
> > Apennines; at various times Celtic dialect was also
> > spoken in much of
> > northern Europe, from Austria, Hungary, the Czech
> > Republic, Slovakia, much
> > of the Balkans, to Galatia in what is today Turkey."
> >
> > The entry for Galatia says it is an "ancient
> > district in central Anatolia
> > ... settled in the 3rd century BC."
> > _________________________________
> > "Raffiniert ist der Herr Gott, aber Boshaft ist er
> > nicht"
> > --Albert Einstein
> >
> >
> >
>
>
> __________________________________________________
> Do You Yahoo!?
> Yahoo! Autos - Get free new car price quotes
> http://autos.yahoo.com
>